Raising ‘Grand Union’

Every New Year’s Day, modern-day patriots gather at Prospect Hill in Somerville, Mass., where Gen. George Washington Jan. 1, 1776 witnessed the raising “Grand Union,” the first uniquely American flag.

Although, the English soliders garrisoned in nearby Boston may have dismissed the raising as a symbolical gesture, but at the very moment, Gen. Henry Knox was finishing a 300-mile trek with 60 cannon captured from Fort Ticonderoga, an English fort on the New York banks of Lake Champlain. Knox arrived at Washington’s Cambridge heaquarters Jan. 24, 1776 and by March batteries in Cambridge and Dorchester Heights made the English garrison in Boston untenable.

The English left Boston March 17, 1776, a holiday still celebrated in Boston as “Evacuation Day.”

(Photos courtesy of the City of Somerville’s Historical Preservation Commission)

Neil W. McCabe is the editor of HE's "Guns & Patriots" e-letter and was a senior reporter at the Human Events newspaper. McCabe deployed with the Army Reserve to Iraq for 15 months as a combat historian. For many years, he was a reporter and photographer for "The Pilot," Boston's Catholic paper. He was also the editor of the free community papers "The Somerville (Mass.) News and "The Alewife (North Cambridge, Mass.)." Email him: [email protected] Follow him on Twitter: @neilwmccabe.